Oregon high school students and Mariachi STEAM camp violinists (from left to right) Dulceluna Cebrera Gomez, Keili Piña Cisneros and Isabel Uribe-Jensen practice on July 17, 2024, in the Linfield University music building in McMinnville, Ore. The annual Mariachi STEAM camp exposes Oregon high schoolers to in-demand high tech careers and helps them sharpen their music skills.
Kyra Buckley / OPB
“One, two, three, one,” shouts 16-year-old Dulceluna Cebrera Gomez as she gives a slight nod, and then glides a bow across her violin strings.
Eight teenage violinists follow. Next, the guitars start up, acting as the rhythm section. Then, the horns layer on to the traditional mariachi song the youth are rehearsing.
It’s day four of Mariachi STEAM camp, and around two dozen teenagers are spending a July afternoon in the music halls of Linfield University, nestled aside the vineyards of McMinnville, Oregon. The weeklong overnight camp for Oregon high school students marries mariachi music with STEM — science, math, technology and engineering — workshops. The program bets music will encourage young people, especially Latinx youth, toward in-demand high tech jobs.
It’s Cebrera Gomez’s first time at Mariachi STEAM camp, which takes STEM and adds an “A” for art.
“I love music,” the Forest Grove High School student said. “I’ve got to a point where I really want to go far with it, to be honest — but I know the stability is an issue. But when it’s STEAM Mariachi camp, it’s like all of these people got into science because of music.”
Gabriel Oropeza Cruz (left), a 17-year-old violinist from Hillsboro High School, and Dulceluna Cebrera Gomez (right), a 16-year-old violinist from Forest Grove High School, research college majors related to science and math fields.
Kyra Buckley / OPB
Cebrera Gomez especially likes mariachi music, but she also likes ‘80s music, Eminem and Childish Gambino. She’s played violin for almost six years, and her friends kept telling her she had to experience the STEAM camp.
“My friends were like, ‘Oh, like you have to go,’” she said. “‘It’s going to be so fun.’”
Fun was part of the point when Intel employee Romanna Flores and a colleague were brainstorming how to get more Latinx kids into STEM careers. Flores had recently seen a performance by a high school mariachi program, and recalls saying to her coworker, “Wouldn’t it be cool if they actually could see how music was integrated in all these other careers?”
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Flores has an art degree and is a business system analyst at Intel, where she’s worked for over a dozen years. Overall, she’s worked in technology for two decades.
“I share my example because it’s important for students to recognize that they have choices,” Flores said. “They can actually find careers that incorporate their first passion, which for this camp is music.”
Intel conducts a lot of its research and development in Oregon and is among the state’s largest employers. Although the chipmaker is in the process of cutting 15,000 positions worldwide, overall industry analysts predict in the next six years the U.S. semiconductor sector will be short 67,000 engineers, technicians and computer scientists. Meanwhile, Pew research shows Latinos hold less than 10% of STEM jobs overall.
When Flores and her colleague pitched the idea of a Mariachi STEAM summer camp for youth, Intel agreed to help fund it. The Washington County 4-H club is a founding partner of the weeklong, overnight camp, which costs students no more than $40 dollars for the week. Flores said the real cost is around $800 per camper.
Romanna Flores, Mariachi STEAM camp director and business analyst at Intel, poses for a portrait on July 18, 2024, in McMinnville, Oregon. Flores helped found the camp eight years after a lunchtime conversation with an Intel colleague about how to get more Latinx youth involved in engineering.
Kyra Buckley / OPB
Despite announcing major layoffs in an effort to save $10 billion company wide, an Intel spokesperson confirmed the mechanism for funding the Mariachi STEAM camp is not affected. Part of the money donated to the camp comes from a matching program: For every hour an Intel employee volunteers at an organization, the Intel Foundation donates $10. Intel has not yet completed the current round of layoffs and it is unknown which employees will be cut in Oregon, and if there might be an indirect effect on the mariachi camp.
Over the years, organizations beyond Intel and Washington County 4-H have signed on to support the camp. They include the Oregon chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, and Juntos, a program supporting Latinx Oregonians in education based at Oregon State University.
Most days at camp, after morning music practice, the youth musicians head to workshops designed to expose them to STEM careers. In one workshop, students research college majors and look up student groups geared towards those majors. In another workshop, the high schoolers learn about networking and meet with local professionals mostly in STEM fields.
On the fifth day of camp, Intel AI software engineer Daniel De León instructs the students on how they could use artificial intelligence to program a music streaming platform. The campers break into groups as De León cues up a song, which the students analyze and rate to create a data set.
De León explains the value of data sets as students sing along to songs they easily recognize. Next, De León leads a brief discussion on the pros and cons of how data is gathered and collected, whether by AI or humans.
The 30-year-old engineer has worked at Intel for two years, and previously interned there. De León also got his master’s degree in computer science at OSU.
Miguel Escalera (left), 23, and Dulceluna Cebrera Gomez, a 16-year-old violinist from Forest Grove High School, go over sheet music on day four of Mariachi STEAM camp. Escalera took leave from his U.S. Marine Corp post in California to serve as assistant director for the camp.
Kyra Buckley / OPB
On this day, he appears comfortable in the classroom talking with teens about coding, AI or soccer, but later outside the classroom he said school was challenging for him growing up. It wasn’t until community college when De León became fascinated with the science behind how things work — like how sound waves travel through a well-installed subwoofer in a car audio system.
When he started exploring engineering, he said it naturally fit that he would incorporate the science of sound into his research.
“My parents are musicians,” De León said. “They play in a trío, and they play boleros and old school Mexican music. I grew up playing guitar and listening to it pretty much every day. I heard them rehearse every day.”
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But De León said it wasn’t until college that he had his first engineering mentor. Support from a professional helped spur his love of science, De León said, and he hopes the campers experience having a mentor earlier than he did.
Cebrera Gomez doesn’t know what she wants to major in at college yet, but said camp lets her explore different careers.
“Right now it’s science and engineering that this week have really been like, ‘whoa!’ to me,” she said. “All these workshops really have opened my eyes to how they connect with music.”
Cebrera Gomez is already planning on coming to camp next summer. She said one adult in particular caught her eye: Flores, the camp director with an art degree working at Intel.
“I really want to do something like her,” Cebrera Gomez said. “I know it takes risks, but I don’t wanna let go of music. I really don’t.”